Every administration covered in this series has issued its own written guidance telling ICE agents who to prioritize for arrest and removal. Those documents matter more than campaign rhetoric, because they're the actual instructions agents work from. This piece traces that paper trail — memo by memo, executive order by executive order — from a formal three-tier priority system down to no categorical priorities at all, picking up directly from the previous piece's look at how Obama's own targeting shifted over his two terms.
2011–2014: Building a Priority System
Documented fact: Starting with a 2011 memo from ICE Director John Morton and culminating in DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson's November 20, 2014 memorandum, the Obama administration built a written, three-tier enforcement priority system, covered in detail in the previous piece in this series. Priority 1 covered national security threats, convicted felons, and gang members; lower tiers covered less serious offenses and recent border crossers; people outside all three tiers were, per the memo's own language, generally not priorities for removal, with factors like family ties and length of U.S. residence relevant to individual discretion decisions.
2017: "No Longer Exempt Classes or Categories"
Documented fact: On January 25, 2017, President Trump signed executive orders on border security and interior immigration enforcement. On February 21, 2017, DHS Secretary John Kelly issued implementing memoranda that explicitly rescinded the tiered approach: "The Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement." The Kelly memos broadened the practical enforcement population well beyond Obama-era Tier 1: agents could pursue removal against people convicted of any crime, no matter how minor, directed additional resources to the Criminal Alien Program (which uses local jail bookings to identify people for removal), and moved to expand expedited removal — a fast-track process without a full immigration court hearing — for people who couldn't show two years of continuous U.S. presence.
DHS Secretary John Kelly
Kelly's February 2017 memoranda rescinded the Obama-era tiered priority system entirely. Photo: Official DHS Portrait, January 23, 2017, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
2021: A Pause, Blocked, Then Narrower Priorities
Documented fact: On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, the Biden administration issued a memo (signed by acting DHS official David Pekoske) ordering a 100-day pause on many deportations while the administration reviewed enforcement policy. Texas sued within days; on January 26, 2021, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton blocked the pause nationwide, and made that block indefinite the following month. The pause itself never took effect. The separate part of that same memo — narrower interim arrest priorities — wasn't blocked by that ruling and stayed in place until superseded by a more permanent framework: on September 30, 2021, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued formal guidelines limiting enforcement to three priority categories — threats to national security, public safety, or border security — explicitly stating that unlawful presence alone should not, by itself, be grounds for arrest or removal.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Mayorkas's September 2021 memo narrowed enforcement to three specific threat categories, before it was challenged in court. Photo: Official DHS Portrait, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Documented fact: Texas and Louisiana sued again, this time over the Mayorkas memo itself. A district court vacated it in June 2022. The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled 8–1 in June 2023 (United States v. Texas) that the states lacked legal standing to challenge federal enforcement-priority guidance in the first place — not a ruling on whether the priorities were good policy, but on whether the states had a legal right to sue over them at all. The practical result: the executive branch's authority to set enforcement priorities was affirmed, though by then Biden's term was nearing its end.
The Supreme Court Building
In United States v. Texas (2023), the Court ruled 8–1 on standing grounds, not on the merits of the enforcement-priority policy itself. Photo: Ken Hammond, USDA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
"Keeping Stolen Land 'Pure' Since 2003" Sticker
A policy that once formally excluded categories of people from enforcement now excludes no one — this Abolish Ice design's warning-sign satire lands harder once you've seen the actual memos removing those categories one by one.
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2025: No Categories at All
Documented fact: On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed the executive order "Protecting the American People Against Invasion", revoking the Biden-era enforcement-priority framework entirely. Per the order and subsequent DHS implementation, ICE no longer designates categories of removable noncitizens as lower priority; the stated direction is to enforce immigration law against any removable person, regardless of criminal history, community ties, or length of U.S. residence. Policies that had previously limited enforcement at "sensitive locations" like schools, churches, and hospitals were also rescinded. What that shift looks like in arrest and removal numbers is the subject of our next piece on whether more ICE arrests are actually producing more deportations, and who inside the current administration has pushed that shift the hardest is covered in our piece on what changed under Stephen Miller.
What Actually Changed, in One Sentence
Interpretation: Every administration in this 14-year span had discretion over who to prioritize — that discretion is a real, court-affirmed feature of executive power, not a loophole. What changed between 2014 and 2025 is whether that discretion was expressed through a formal, written, tiered priority system (Obama's approach, narrowed further by Biden), or through the absence of categorical priorities altogether (both Trump terms, more completely in the second). That distinction — a system with tiers versus a system without them — is what the next two pieces in this series build directly on: how that shift shows up in who's actually being arrested, and where Stephen Miller's documented role fits into the current version of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does having no enforcement priorities mean ICE has to arrest everyone?
No — ICE has never had the resources to arrest every removable person in the country, in any administration covered here. Removing categorical priorities changes which people are legally eligible targets and how officers are instructed to use their discretion case by case; it doesn't create unlimited enforcement capacity.
Did the Supreme Court rule that Biden's enforcement priorities were good policy?
No. The 2023 ruling was about legal standing — whether Texas and Louisiana had the right to sue over the policy in federal court — not about whether the policy itself was wise or unwise. That's an important, easy-to-miss distinction when this case gets cited in political debate.
Is setting enforcement priorities unique to Democratic administrations?
No. Every administration since at least 2011 covered in this piece, Republican and Democratic, has issued written enforcement guidance of some kind. What's varied is whether that guidance creates formal categories of lower-priority people (Obama, and Biden after Sept. 2021) or explicitly declines to (both Trump terms).
"Keeping Stolen Land 'Pure' Since 2003" Sticker (Border Map Edition)
No categorical exemptions left standing, by design — the border-and-barbed-wire version of this Anti-Ice Stickers design is a visual match for the "no exempt classes or categories" language quoted directly from the 2017 Kelly memos above.
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Every Abolish Ice sticker and magnet purchase from our Anti-ICE Stickers collection helps fund the reporting and continued development of this public resource.
Related Reading
Obama Deported Hundreds of Thousands. So Why Was His Enforcement Strategy Different?: the fuller story behind the 2014 Johnson memo referenced throughout this piece.
Are More ICE Arrests Actually Producing More Deportations?: what the removal of categorical priorities looks like in actual 2025–2026 arrest and removal data.
What Changed Under Stephen Miller?: the documented record on who inside the current White House has pushed enforcement targets the hardest.
Sources: DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson memorandum, Nov. 20, 2014; DHS Secretary John Kelly memoranda, Feb. 21, 2017; Executive Order 13768, "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," Jan. 25, 2017; DHS acting Secretary David Pekoske memorandum, Jan. 20, 2021; DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas memorandum, Sept. 30, 2021; United States v. Texas, 599 U.S. ___ (2023); Executive Order, "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," Jan. 20, 2025.
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